Eliana Carter POV

There was one last stop I had to make before the airport swallowed me whole.

The Old Oak stood at the edge of the Little estate, a silent sentinel guarding the creek. It was the sacred ground where Jax and I, at ten years old, had sliced our palms.

It was where we swore a blood oath to protect each other.

I needed to kill that memory before I could leave.

I pulled the pocket knife from my jacket, the metal cold against my feverish skin. I found the scar in the ancient bark easily enough. It had weathered with time, but it was still there.

*J + E.*

I drove the blade into the wood.

The oak was ancient, hard and resisting my efforts as if trying to protect the lie we’d carved there. I didn't care. I carved a deep, jagged line through the initials, sawing back and forth until bark flew like shrapnel.

Sap bled out from the fresh wound, weeping like a severed vein.

"Well, isn't this pathetic."

I spun around.

Catalina was standing there. She wasn't being followed. She had been hunting me.

Her gaze flickered over my shoulder, and a slow, toxic smirk spread across her lips. Jax was walking up the hill behind her, though he hadn't seen us yet.

She stepped toward me, lowering her voice.

"Trying to erase history?" she asked, her tone dripping with mock pity. "You can't erase what everyone knows, Eliana. He chose me."

She lunged.

It was a clumsy, flailing motion, but the ground beneath me was treacherous. She shoved me, hard.

I stumbled back, my bad ankle buckling under the sudden weight.

I fell heavily into the mud near the creek bank. The freezing slime seeped instantly through my jeans, chilling me to the bone.

Jax reached the clearing at that exact moment.

He saw me sprawled in the mud. He saw Catalina standing over me, breathless and feigning terror.

"Jax!" she cried out, her voice pitching into a calculated whimper. "She came at me with a knife!"

The damning evidence was still gripped tight in my hand.

I looked up at Jax.

I waited for the truth to matter. I waited for the boy who had bled with me on this very spot to reach down and pull me up.

Jax looked at the gouged, weeping tree. Then he looked at the knife in my hand. Finally, his cold eyes landed on me.

"You are a mess, Eliana," he said, his voice devoid of warmth.

He reached out, but not for me. He took Catalina's hand.

He pulled her to his side, shielding her from the threat he believed I was.

"You are no longer my burden," he said.

The words hung in the damp air, heavier than the mud clinging to my clothes.

They were the sound of a key turning in a lock.

He thought he was discarding me. He didn't realize he was severing the last chain holding me down.

I watched them walk away. I didn't attempt to rise until they had vanished over the crest of the hill.

Slowly, I wiped the mud from my hands. I didn't cry. There were no tears left to shed for people who didn't exist anymore.

I walked to my car.

I drove to O'Hare in a trance. I pulled into the long-term parking lot, turned off the engine, and left the keys sitting on the dashboard.

I walked into the terminal.

I wasn't Eliana Carter, the Chicago Princess, anymore. I was just a ghost with a one-way ticket to New York.

And for the first time in my life, the silence in my head wasn't fear.

It was peace.

Eliana Carter POV

The emergency room smelled like bleach and other people's bad decisions.

The doctor told me to stay off my ankle for six weeks. He handed me crutches and a prescription for painkillers I had no intention of taking.

I needed the pain.

The pain was the only thing reminding me that I was still in my body, that I hadn't completely dissociated into the ether.

I drove back to the Little Estate one last time.

Not to see Jax.

To see the woman who raised him.

Karen was in the solarium, arranging white lilies in a crystal vase. It was a perfect picture of domestic Mafia bliss—ignore the blood, focus on the blooms.

She looked up as I hobbled in, her eyes scanning the bandage on my ankle.

"You're making a spectacle, Eliana," she said softly.

She snipped a stem.

"Jax is just blowing off steam. Men have needs. You know this."

I walked to the glass table.

I didn't sit down.

Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the engagement ring. It was a five-carat diamond, heavy and cold. It was supposed to be a promise.

It was actually a price tag.

I set it on the table next to her shears. The metal clicked sharply against the glass.

"The engagement is void, Karen."

She stopped snipping. She looked at the ring, then at me.

"You can't void a contract," she said.

"Only the Don can do that."

"My father has already spoken to the Commission," I said.

"The Carters are transferring allegiance. We are under the protection of the New York Syndicate as of an hour ago."

Karen went pale. New York was a rival territory. It was a declaration of war, or at least a massive geopolitical shift in the underworld.

"Jax did this," I said.

"Tell him his asset has liquidated herself."

I turned around.

"Eliana!" she called after me.

"You can't survive out there. You're a canary. You'll die in the wild."

I didn't answer.

I drove my Mercedes to O'Hare International Airport. I parked in the long-term lot, row G.

I left the engine running.

I left the keys on the dashboard.

I left my phone in the cup holder.

Taking only my bag, my passport, and the cash Uncle Sal had given me, I walked away from the car.

I walked away from the Carter name.

I walked away from the girl who thought love was enough to tame a monster.

I boarded a plane to New York City.

As the wheels left the tarmac, I looked down at the sprawling grid of Chicago. It looked small from up here.

It looked like a cage I had finally figured out how to open.

Jax Little POV:

I woke up with a headache that felt like a rusty drill boring straight into my temples.

The room smelled thickly of stale champagne and cheap vanilla perfume.

Catalina was asleep on my chest, her arm thrown heavily over my neck.

I felt a sudden, violent wave of revulsion.

I shoved her off.

She groaned and rolled over, pulling the silk sheets up to her chin.

I sat up and rubbed my face roughly.

I needed coffee.

More than that, I needed to clear my head and figure out how to punish Eliana for the scene she caused yesterday.

She needed to learn that walking away from me wasn't just forbidden—it wasn't an option.

I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and stalked downstairs.

My mother was sitting at the dining table.

She wasn't eating.

She was staring at a diamond ring resting in the center of her empty plate.

My stomach dropped.

"Where is she?" I asked.

Karen looked up.

Her eyes were bloodshot.

"She's gone, Jax."

I laughed.

It was a dry, humorless sound.

"Gone where? Her parents' house? I'll go drag her back."

"She's gone," Karen repeated coldly.

"And the Carters are gone."

I froze.

"What do you mean, 'the Carters are gone'?"

"They transferred," she said.

"Your father is in a meeting with the Capos right now."

"The Commission approved the transfer to the Tran Syndicate in New York."

She paused, her gaze hardening.

"Because of you."

"Because you couldn't keep your zipper up and your property in line."

"No," I said.

"That's impossible."

"New York wouldn't take them. It breaks the truce."

"They took them because the Carters offered them fifty percent of their shipping routes," she said.

"To buy Eliana's freedom."

I turned and stormed toward the study.

I slammed the door open.

I went to the secure archives concealed behind the false wall.

I pulled the heavy leather ledger for the current month.

There it was.

In stark red ink.

The Carter Family: Terminated.

Status: Transferred.

Protection: Tran Syndicate.

I stared at the words until they blurred.

She didn't just leave me.

She defected.

She had cut the strings.

I slammed the book shut, the sound echoing like a gunshot through the silent room.

Did she think a few hundred miles and a new flag could protect her?

Did she think she belonged to New York now?

She was wrong.

She had worn my ring on her finger for three years.

She carried my mark on her soul.

She could run to the ends of the earth, and she would still be mine.